The Danish History, Books I-IX eBook

Of these two, Angul, the fountain, so runs the tradition,
of the beginnings of the Anglian race, caused his
name to be applied to the district which he ruled.
This was an easy kind of memorial wherewith to immortalise
his fame: for his successors a little later, when
they gained possession of Britain, changed the original
name of the island for a fresh title, that of their
own land. This action was much thought of by
the ancients: witness Bede, no mean figure among
the writers of the Church, who was a native of England,
and made it his care to embody the doings of his country
in the most hallowed treasury of his pages; deeming
it equally a religious duty to glorify in writing the
deeds of his land, and to chronicle the history of
the Church.

From Dan, however, so saith antiquity; the pedigrees
of our kings have flowed in glorious series, like
channels from some parent spring. Grytha, a matron
most highly revered among the Teutons, bore him two
sons, humble and Lother.

The ancients, when they were to choose a king, were
wont to stand on stones planted in the ground, and
to proclaim their votes, in order to foreshadow from
the steadfastness of the stones that the deed would
be lasting. By this ceremony Humble was elected
king at his father’s death, thus winning a novel
favour from his country; but by the malice of ensuing
fate he fell from a king into a common man. For
he was taken by Lother in war, and bought his life
by yielding up his crown; such, in truth, were the
only terms of escape offered him in his defeat.
Forced, therefore, by the injustice of a brother to
lay down his sovereignty, he furnished the lesson
to mankind, that there is less safety, though more
pomp, in the palace than in the cottage. Also,
he bore his wrong so meekly that he seemed to rejoice
at his loss of title as though it were a blessing;
and I think he had a shrewd sense of the quality of
a king’s estate. But Lother played the
king as insupportably as he had played the soldier,
inaugurating his reign straightway with arrogance and
crime; for he counted it uprightness to strip all
the most eminent of life or goods, and to clear his
country of its loyal citizens, thinking all his equals
in birth his rivals for the crown. He was soon
chastised for his wickedness; for he met his end in
an insurrection of his country; which had once bestowed
on him his kingdom, and now bereft him of his life.

Skiold, his son, inherited his natural bent,
but not his behaviour; avoiding his inborn perversity
by great discretion in his tender years, and thus
escaping all traces of his father’s taint.
So he appropriated what was alike the more excellent
and the earlier share of the family character; for
he wisely departed from his father’s sins, and
became a happy counterpart of his grandsire’s
virtues. This man was famous in his youth among
the huntsmen of his father for his conquest of a monstrous
beast: a marvellous incident, which augured his